But here, as though
struck by a fresh and very objectionable idea, he broke out:
"Nothing has happened has it? No cowardly brute has interfered with
you or upset you? Dear God alive, don't tell me I'm too late, don't
tell me that."
Upon Damaris this sudden, though to her unaccountable, violence and heat
acted as a cordial. She raised her head, pushing back the damp hair from
her forehead, and displaying a proud if strained and weary face.
"No," she said, "of course not. Who would venture to be rude to me? I
have not seen anyone all the afternoon--until now, when you came. And,"
she added by way of further explanation--she didn't want to be ungracious
or unkind, but she did want, in justice to herself, to have this
understood--"in the distance I didn't recognize you. I mistook you for
someone else"--
"Who else?" he took her up, and with a queer flicker--if of a smile, then
one with a keenish edge to it--in his eyes and about his mouth.
"For my father," Damaris answered. "It was a stupid mistake, because he
is away staying in Norfolk for partridge shooting, and I have not any
real reason to expect him home for several days yet.
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